Hi everyone,
I just started reading the MMM blog and think I could use advice on my family's kind of unique situation. In our family is my son(7), my wife(25), and myself(26) and we are living in our 3BR 1.5BR townhouse that just before discovering MMM I had refinanced to take out the extra equity/get rid of PMI/lower the interest, the equity was used to pay off credit card debt and a car loan. The unique issues we face are with my son, he has asthma, eczema, and seasonal as well as food allergies so is unable to eat Nuts of any kind as well as cod. The end goal is for me to be able to leave my line of work in 14-19years the sooner the better because I have zero passion for it, the pay and the fact i work from home 99% of the time with full benefits are the reason I stay. With that said the other major goal is to move as me and the wife can not stand living under and HoA/in a townhouse with minimal yard/privacy, we would be happier in a moderate house with a large yard and no HoA. Outside of my line of work in technology I really have no idea where I could start either gaining extra income or where we could start cutting expenses.
The money breakdown is as follows:
Monthly Income:
Me: 2800
Wife: 1000-1500, she works on tips
Monthly Expenses:
Mortgage (including taxes and insurance): 430
HoA dues(includes water, trash and external building maintenance): 225
Electric/Gas: 100-200
Cell phones: 70
Cable/Internet: 100
Netflix: 9
Car insurance: 200
Food(groceries and eating out): 400-600
Wife student loan 1: 130
Wife Student loan 2: 65
My student loan 1(interest only): 100
My student loan 2(interest only): 62
My student loan 3(interest only): 38
My student loan 4: 290
budgeted extra just in case: 200
Totals:
income: 3800-4300
expenses: 2419-2719
leftover: 1081-1881
Loan balances:
Mortgage: 72000@4.5%
My student loan 1(interest only):9800@11.25%
My student loan 2(interest only): 8150@9%
My student loan 3(interest only):6000@7.5%
My student loan 4: 45500@6%
Wife student loan 1: 10000@10%
Wife Student loan 2: 5000@10%
The current plan is to do the following:
Goal - Month
my student Loan 2 - 02/2014
wife student loan 2 - 05/2014
wife student loan 1 - 10/2014
my student Loan 3 - 03/2015
Save 30,000ish for down payment - 06/2016
Move - 07/2016
The reason for the move at this time frame is it will be the summer between elementary and middle school for my son and the hope is to minimize the impact to him. After this point the plan would be to pay off my remaining 2 student loans as fast as possible with #3 before #4 because of interest rate, after which we will start investing all of our extra money(after I learn how but I have a lot of time to read).
I would like to thank everyone in advance for reading this and will check back as often as I can to respond to any questions or advice.